Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How do you feel about the public school system?

I post this as a mom of a gifted child and also as a public school teacher. I am very grateful for the magnet program that my daughter participates in, but I do not expect it to meet every need for her. It gives her not only a wonderful foundation, but extends her and provides her such an amazing peer group. But like every child, mine is unique and no one knows her and all her interests that she wants to pursue like I do. That's where I come in. It is my job to provide her additional help where she is challenged and it is my job to enable her to pursue her interests in such a way that enhances her education and her whole being. Absolutely, the teacher can help with weaknesses and use her strengths to extend her, but a teacher is just part of the picture.

As a teacher, I can tell you that it is incredibly challenging to differentiate in current constraints. Funding has been cut so much that we have zero planning time. It is a struggle to keep our heads above water and adapt to common core standards (which I love.) I come in to work super early in the morning so that I can work on planning and paperwork, attend IEP, 504 and Student Study Team meetings. I work through recess and lunch with students, providing them extra help (be it emotional or academic).

Unless you have ever been a special education teacher it is very challenging to imagine the inherent ADD that goes along with the job. There is always something or someone requiring your attention, be it something to be done, or a student, fellow teacher, parent, aide or administrator. It is very challenging to work through the day without a quiet moment. There is literally always someone in your face at all times. I consider special education to be very similar to gifted education, just at another end of the spectrum. I adore working with my students and I love my relationships with both them and their parents.

In a perfect world teachers would have scheduled times for planning that would help them better prepare lessons that include differentiation. It would help provide us time to communicate not only with other teachers, but with you. And lastly, it would provide us with more one on one time with your children.

To be honest, I send out e-mails regularly to parents in which I tell them that their child is not doing required work and I ask them to please monitor and help ensure homework does get done at home. If a child needs additional help in understanding, we offer it. I cannot tutor a child after school with their homework simply because a parent does not. After school I turn into a mother of my own child. That's why I put my extra work in on the front end. However, most schools do offer Homework Clubs etc. to help on this. Unfortunately, most struggling students and their parents do not take advantage of it.

Education is a partnership. Public schools are not perfect and nor are many parents. You figure out what works for your family in the best interests of your child and you do it. It's not a one-way street. A little love goes a long way - in so many different ways.

In our school, when the topic of sorting all children by ability and not age has come up, there have always been 2 responses: it's racist/classist and it's not fair to the bottom performing children because they will know that they are "less than" and their self esteem will be hurt.

[i]As a teacher, I can tell you that it is incredibly challenging to differentiate in current constraints.[/i]

Yes it is, and as an educator myself, I have always supported ability grouping. Our school will not group by ability and so they continue to claim that they are differentiating when they clearly are not. Honestly, no one really wants them to differentiate anyway. It's too difficult and it's never done properly.

I wonder when it stopped because all of the schools I attended in the 70's-80's did ability grouping. They did mix up ages but only for 6th and 7th grade for some reason. With the other grades they kept the ability grouping within the grade. Homeroom teachers of course had kids of all different abilities, but the kids rotated around and went different places depending on the subject. So I was with one group of kids for math and a different group of kids for reading (I was considered advanced for reading but not for math). I never thought negatively about myself for being in a lower math group or the second lowest gym group. I don't think I thought much about it at all. In a way, it was a relief being with kids at a similar level--in gym for instance. Who wants to play sports with kids who are way more advanced?

I totally agree.

Might objections be based on the older practice of "tracking" in which students were locked in to one performance level throughout their school careers? Steady improvements in identifying/addressing LD/2e issues have enabled students to make dramatic academic gains after a breakthrough. Similarly, developments in technology have provided adaptive assessments which may aid in flexible clustering.

Ditto. Beyond anecdotes, there is research to back this up. One link here- http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/kulik.html, to an article titled "An Analysis of the Research on Ability Grouping: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives", authored by James A. Kulik, 1992:

I'm curious for those unhappy with the public schools, whether your school districts have a high or low percent of gifted kids. All 3 of my kids are in the gifted program (hard cutoff of 130 WISC scores, although I'm sure some parents of kids in the 128-130 range have successfully lobbied for entrance), but only one would meet DYS. Our school district has an usually large gifted population (at least 10% of the kids in each of their 3 grades are in the gifted program, with closer to 15% for my youngest).

I don't feel our school district is perfect, but we've been generally happy and they have been open to our requests. The vast majority of teachers we've had are good with differentiated instruction and have worked with our kids to address their strengths/weaknesses. Sure, there's lots of bureaucracy, but at all levels -- from teacher to principal to district-wide curriculum heads -- they clearly care about the kids and want to make things work.

But again, we're pretty much a MG family and my DYS-level kid is a pleaser and happy-go-lucky.

Some districts have quotas. For example, the top 15% of achievers will be dubbed gifted, mirroring the ethnic composition of the school population. In this example, if there are 100 kids in a grade level there will be 15 in the gifted program. If the 100 pupils in this grade level consist of five ethnicities... 20 Latin American or South American pupils, 20 Native American pupils, 20 Middle Eastern or Asian American pupils, 20 African American pupils, and 20 European American pupils, each of these five groups will be equally represented: The three highest achievers from each demographic will be chosen. While some believe this is fair/equal/equitable, both a child who cannot keep up and a child who is bored with the slow pace of gen ed may not benefit by this arrangement.

Yes, as documented in this post:

http://giftedexchange.blogspot.com/2011/07/making-numbers-come-out-right.html
Making the Numbers Come Out Right
by Laura Vanderkam
Gifted Exchange Blog
FRIDAY, JULY 01, 2011

Different IQ cutoffs for different races to achieve proportionality is racial discrimination. I oppose this, as do most Americans, according to opinion polls on racial preferences.

Other districts also have identification procedures SO lax that pretty much anyone whose parents are determined enough can have their child identified as "gifted" and this also has the side benefit of allowing administrators to say (with a straight face) that "all of our coursework* is differentiat-ed/-able" as a reason why no additional differentiation is possible for children at high LOG.

*Well, it would be with some 30% of the students in the district identified as GT, wouldn't it?

Yeah-- there's no programming past regular "gifted" either, and most of THAT is comprised of not-really-rigorous-or-challenging fun or artsy extracurricular enrichment run by a group of cliquey parents who apparently have not only too much time on their hands, but far too much $ as well, and are determined to invest in their kids' status. Parenting: the Competitive Martha Stewart Edition, if you will. Genuine highly gifted or advanced material? Just doesn't exist. One does encounter the mind-boggling proposition that there's no difference between a student who scores 95th percentile on a grade-level achievement test and one who scores 99th percentile on an out-of-level one like the SAT or EXPLORE.

But I may just not understand this properly. Yes, that's the only thing that makes sense of this...


While I might well believe that 5% of the district population is top 1-2% given that we live in a Silicon Forest college town, no WAY do I buy that 30% of them have "special" educational needs by virtue of high ability. See, if there WERE that many (and there aren't) then the district would be running a sort of informal magnet school, which isn't the case, judging from what DD's local friends do in school. Her gifted friends, I might add. LOL. Some of them are actually MG to HG-- and they are bored spitless.

This is how public education works here in Lake Wobegon. Because statistics are just so-- harsh.